LANGUAGE KEY TO RECONCILIATION IN SOUTHERN THAI PROVINCES

         In multi-ethnic and multicultural societies, language is about more than communication. It is also about recognition and accommodation, power and power-sharing. When society fosters power-sharing and forges compromise and consensus to underpin societal cohesion and achieve relative peace at home, the role of official and national languages can be powerful and paramount.

         Thailand’s three southernmost border provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat, and parts of Songkhla, where a Malay-Muslim insurgency has raged in varying degrees for more than a century, with the past decade being the most virulent and deadliest, have shown poor use of language as a governance tool.

        The Thai language is the country’s only official tongue. Even English, which successive Thai governments have espoused as a way of upgrading the workforce and internationalising Thais for the globalisation age, is considered a quasi-secondary but not official language.

            Evidently, a wide variety of languages and dialects are spoken throughout the nation, but central Thai is the one and only national language in official documents and dealings.

MALAY FIRST AND THAI SECOND

          That the official Thai language is the dominant medium of communication has been more or less accepted or tolerated over the decades. It is testimony to the proselytising and hegemonic Thai state, particularly its rigid fixation with being unitary and indivisible.

        Thailand’s rulers have wielded state power with little regard for the multitude of ethnic identities that constitute the nation. These people of different historical pathways and diverse cultural sensitivities and norms have had to adjust to the Thai state. The inviolable and unitary Thai state, regardless of the government of the day, has not made adjustments over the decades.

       This formula of assimilation for integration has worked to a large degree. The overseas Chinese, for example, have become so enmeshed and embedded in Thai society that they are considered and accepted as one and the same. Some Chinese-Thais still carry on with different versions of Chinese-language dialects, but they all speak Thai and have no qualms about it. Most importantly, Thailand is not beset with ethnic and racial tensions between the overseas Chinese and indigenous Thais, unlike Malaysia, for example.

           However, the reality with Malay Muslims in the deep south is fundamentally different. The Malays there are equally Malay and Muslim in the first order. By ethnic identity and citizenship requirement, they are Malay first and Thai second.

           Yet, their “Malayness” is hardly accommodated in Thai officialdom. When the latest surge of Malay-Muslim insurgency flared up in January 2004, the powers that be in Thailand dismissed Yawi (in Thai parlance), or Jawi as it is called by local Malay Muslims, as a possible second official language in the predominantly Malay-Muslim deep south.

Diperolehi dari sumber: 

https://www.todayonline.com/world/asia/language-key-reconciliation-southern-thai-provinces 

Noor Asshikin Binti Abdul Zaid merupakan sukarelawan yang akan melaksanakan Misi Jelajah Patani pada 6-21 Ogos 2019 sebagai AJK Aktiviti.